


River Back Home

by whereismygarden



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Rumbelle Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-20
Updated: 2013-12-20
Packaged: 2018-01-05 06:48:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1090869
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whereismygarden/pseuds/whereismygarden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rumpelstiltskin meets Belle much earlier.</p>
            </blockquote>





	River Back Home

**Author's Note:**

> My Rumbelle Secret Santa for storybrookelacey on tumblr. her prompt was "get up to get down."

                He’d lost the bean: he’d been so glad to leave the ship, leave Milah and her bleeding, worthless lover on the dirty deck that he hadn’t checked. And now he was standing on the end of the dock, the smell of the sea nearly making him sick, the leftover gusts of the bean’s magic lingering on the green waves. Rumpelstiltskin clenched his fists together. No matter. He had all the time in the world to find his way to Bae. There would be other beans. Other paths: the curse he had thought of, for one.

                His house he left shrouded in wards against fire, rot, and robbers: there was not much in it he wanted to keep, besides his wheel, Bae’s things, and the stick he couldn’t just toss aside, but those needed to be kept safe and hidden. He wasn’t sure where he would go to start: he had maps of the realms, but there were uncharted forests and mountains in every direction, lands beyond the sea and across tundra. The answer was somewhere, in all of it.

                He headed into the Black Forest first: legend held that it was full of unicorns, manticores, and other monsters, full of magic or knowledge. He could do with both.

                It lived up to its name: the cover of trees was so absolute, the forest floor was nearly bare, only a few small herbs peeking up through knee-high leaf litter and chestnut shells. The intimidating boots he favored slipped over the round nuts, and he switched for something more like the shoes he’d worn as a shepherd and spinner, only finer. Though he felt the cold only dimly, he still felt better shrouded in the heavy maroon cloak, hood pulled up around his head. There was no path to follow once he was past the last little settlement, and he continued, wading through half-rotten leaves and over fallen logs: around these, sunlight filtered in past the trees, and flowers and vines grew thick over the decaying trunks.

                Three days’ and nights’ walk in, and he had come across naught but trees, the occasional brook, and more trees. Not a whisper of a dryad in a hedge of thorns, not a single ancient tower with some runes carved inside its walls. So much for the secrets of the Black Forest.

                For all that he had as long as he needed, this had been a waste of time, and as dawn’s dull blue and pink tried to push through the mess of green over his head, he turned and slammed his fist, hard, into the nearest tree. It hurt, splinters snagging in the backs of his fingers, bark flying back, and the bones in his hand ground against one another. Snarling at nothing, he picked out the fragments of bark embedded in his knuckles and flicked the bloodied wood to the ground.

                “That’s not very productive,” someone said, behind him, and he whirled, spotted a slight figure on an upright branch of a fallen oak, and stalked towards it: whoever it was, he or she was backlit in poor light, and even his eyes couldn’t pick out any features.

                “Who are you?” he snarled, and sent a tendril of magic to yank the speaker down, unwilling to take chances. It landed with an ‘oof!’ on the forest floor, despite the cushion of leaves, and sprang upright, ragged cloth gusting around a slender frame.

                “My name is Belle,” the watcher said, tugging off a hood, and stepped close enough to let him see a woman’s features and long hair. “And _that_ wasn’t very polite.” Rumpelstiltskin flexed his hands angrily, and tossed back his own hood. Watch her shrink away when she saw his mottled, cursed flesh. He would see how bold she was then. However, his plan to scare was thwarted when she stood impassively, looking quite unaffected.

                “Rumpelstiltskin,” he said, and bowed mockingly, as he had to the pirate. She gave a little curtsy in return, smiling, and he could just make out her eyes dancing in the early morning light. “Why are you following me?” She returned to her fallen tree, scrambling up to her previously occupied branch, layers of tattered skirts swirling around her legs.

                “I wasn’t. I was just wandering about the forest.” She didn’t seem unnerved by him at all, despite his throwing her to the ground and his appearance. He lifted his lip, baring his teeth.

                “Likely,” he said. She folded her hands in her lap and gave him a small smile.

                “We could travel together,” she said. “I could help you find whatever you need.” Rumpelstiltskin narrowed his eyes at the strange woman. Why would she offer her help? She was dressed in tights and a bodice, with layers of ragged skirts slit up and down to allow her freedom of movement. Her hair, dark in the dim light and tied back from her face, reminded him unpleasantly of Milah. Some adventurer, perhaps.

                “You just wander about many forests?” he said sourly. She inclined her head.

                “About all the world, really. I’m a wanderer of all things.” He pressed his lips together.

                “I know the type. I’ll be on my way.” He turned away, leaving her still perched on her branch. There was a rustling behind him, and then footsteps, thrashing through the piles of leaves.

                “Wait, I’d like someone to travel with!” she protested. He turned to find Belle, a long staff in hand, trailing close behind him. “Rumpelstiltskin,” she said, and gave another of her smiles, this one warmer and smaller. “Let’s just walk.”

                He wanted to be alone in this useless forest, and this small woman at his arm was distracting, tossing her hair back and breathing and humming next to him, apparently quite content to simply follow his blind path. He should simply disappear, lose her in the woods—she could certainly take care of herself—but her soft noises were no worse than the chattering of birds or squirrels that he heard all day.

                They walked in relative silence until the sun was high enough that occasional spears of light reached them through the canopy.

                “You must have had a very early start,” Belle said, stumbling over a patch of slimy bark and righting herself with the staff. He was reminded sharply of the way he had used to walk over even ground, one hand perennially clutched around his stick. He shook his head.

                “I don’t sleep,” he said coldly. Belle wrinkled her nose: he could see her from the corner of his eye. The gesture was more charming than repelling, oddly enough.

                “You should,” she said. “I can watch over you, if you like.” Rumpelstiltskin whipped his head around sharply, but she was looking at him with an open expression, eyebrows up and blue eyes wide. He hadn’t noticed her eyes earlier: they were blue as the sea, with the barest hint of green at the centers. He disliked the sea, he reminded himself, and re-compared them to the pure colors of the glass bottles of the Illyrican merchants.

                “Then how would you sleep?” he snapped, pointing sharply at her. She brushed his finger away with a little smile, absolutely fearless.

                “I sleep often enough, I think you need it more than me.” We’ll see after the end of the day, he thought. He walked quickly, with the strength of an immortal, and no doubt the woman—barely-grown girl, really—would be worn out enough by his pace that she would simply drop and leave him to continue in solitude.

                She tugged on his arm at midday, and led him to sit under the half-hollow trunk of a dying oak, arranging her skirts neatly around her.

                “We should eat,” she said, and she had led him so easily, he was surprised to find himself standing before her. She produced a lump of something pinkish brown and speckled, holding it out to him.

                “What is this?” he said. He had never seen its like. She had a piece in her own hand, and bit off a chunk with a smile, saying nothing. He sniffed it curiously: the flavor was rich, smoky and sweet together. A small nibble tasted like meat and berries and bread, heavy with salt and cinnamon. Not appealing, but not revolting, and very rich.

                “I make it myself: I learned when I went to Okefenoa, the people there taught me. Pemmican.” She bit off another chunk from hers. “It’s very nourishing, and easy to carry.” Rumpelstiltskin offered back the piece she had given him.

                “I don’t eat,” he said. Belle frowned slightly, and tucked the pemmican back inside her clothes somewhere.

                “No eating nor sleeping,” she said softly, face dismayed. “You’re missing out on the best pleasures of human existence.” Rumpelstiltskin sneered, disturbed by her instinctive concern for him.

                “I don’t miss it,” he said. “Human existence was less than satisfactory.” A monstrous existence wasn’t much better, but it made it easy to be alone, to be powerful, and he was thankful for that. She tilted her head, not upset by his rotten teeth—or not showing it—and tried to make him sit. He stepped back, and made to continue on.

                He made it only a few steps before the woman was at his elbow again, leaves sticking to her hair somehow.

                “I’ll watch while you sleep tonight,” she said, as if he had agreed to her suggestion. He said nothing, simply forged his way on, scaring hopping toads and scuttling salamanders out from under damp leaves and logs.

                In the end, when darkness and cold drew in around them, Belle reached out for his arm once more, frowning a little.

                “You’re starting to turn back the way you went before,” she admonished. “Are you looking for something, or are you just walking about?” He ground his teeth.

                “How would you know?” he snarled, shaking her hand off roughly. “It’s none of your concern.” But he stopped nevertheless. He knew his way around the forests near his home, but this was not the same. Maybe he was walking in circles. It would be impossible to tell. He heard Belle sink down into a pile of leaves, and looked down to see her turn into a dark ball curled up in the crunching leaves.

                “You can get some sleep,” she said pleasantly, and her voice was as sharp as it had been that morning. She hadn’t had any difficulty keeping up with him, and he thought she could stay awake all night without consequence. No human either, then. He settled himself with his back against the trunk of a tree, knees drawn up before his body and cloak wrapped around all.

~

                He woke up when a bird chirped loudly over his head, and opened his eyes to light. Belle was standing against a tree, watching him, as she had said she would. Her clothes were blue too, he realized: faded, in many shades, but her skirts were blue, her bodice as well. He thought it would be impolite to try and see her leggings, but he suspected they were blue as well.

                “What are you?” he said sharply. She blinked.

                “That’s impolite. I didn’t ask you who you were.”

                “I’m the Dark One,” he said, making his voice a growl. “What are you, that you are as bright and awake as ever after a whole day and night?” She twisted her mouth.

                “There’s more than one kind of immortality,” she said huffily. “And I never chose mine.” He stiffened, and got slowly to his feet.

                “What do you mean?” he said, a horrible feeling growing in his chest. Belle’s mouth turned down.

                “I mean I was born this way,” she said, voice confused. He bared his teeth and leapt forward, grabbing her by the neck.

                “Did she send you?” he shouted, shoving her against the tree. “What kind of trick is this? What did she think you could do against me?” Her small hands came up to scratch at his, eyes widening as she kicked at his legs. “Don’t struggle,” he spat. “Just answer me.” He loosened his grip on her throat, enough to let her gasp in a breath.

                “What are you talking about?” she croaked. “Let go of me, Rumpelstiltskin!” Her staff whacked him in the back of the knee, then his spine, and that convinced him. One of the fluttery minions of the Reul Ghorm would have pulled out a wand. He let her go and stepped back, holding his hands up and in front of him.

                “I’m not wrong, though,” he said, because he couldn’t be. “There’s only a few kinds of immortal, _don’t lie to me_.”

                “I never lied! I never said anything, besides—“ she broke off into a fit of coughing. “Besides that I was immortal like you! How dare you!” She stepped towards him, and shoved him in the chest.

                “If you had any sense, _fairy_ , you’d run away!” he spat. “Whether you’ve your magic left or not, I don’t want to look at you.” Belle flinched back from his as though struck.

                “Don’t call me fairy,” she said, through clenched teeth. “I’m not, and I’ve more than half a mind to leave you here to your own troubles, lost in this forest.”

                “If you can find your way, I’m sure I can.” Belle gave him a derisive smile.

                “Of course you can. I don’t doubt you lived in this forest longer than my five years,” she replied, and brushed at her skirts. Rumpelstiltskin paused.

                “I thought you were a wanderer,” he said cautiously. She folded her arms proudly, tugged her ponytail over her shoulder.

                “I’ve just returned. I had part of my childhood here.” Rumpelstiltskin plucked a fragment of bark from her skirt, bowing low to reach her.

                “And what was that like?” he asked. She was still angry at him, still rubbing her throat, and he was still wary.

                “None of your concern, unless you wish to share in kind.”

                “Indeed not,” he said eventually, and toyed with the edge of his cloak, thinking. “Thank you for watching over me as I slept.” She nodded stiffly, and he ground his teeth. “I should not have overreacted and struck you.”

                “No, you shouldn’t have,” she said quickly. “What are you looking for?” He rubbed his palm, wondering if she was being helpful or curious or malicious. He couldn’t tell anymore, everyone looked a threat.

                “Magic,” he said eventually. “Magic to take me to another world.”

~

                They had found a rare meadow, surrounded on all sides with snarled yew and blackthorn covered in white flowers, and Belle was basking on a rock like a lizard while he stalked about, picking up straight sticks and charring them carefully into pure charcoal. There were settlements of charcoal burners on the outskirts of this forest, but he had magic to make what Belle needed. She climbed off her rock readily enough, accepting the charcoal, and turned to the flat rock.

                “I’m not an expert,” she admitted. “But I know a fair amount.” Her mouth quirked up, and she kicked a booted foot at a white flower. She sketched a rough circle on the rock, black dust flying onto her hands. “This is the enchanted forest.” More circles. “Other worlds.” She switched to another stick, that had burned to a grey instead of black, and made swirls all over the circles. “This is magic, and it flows through and between the worlds. You have to ride the existing flow of magic to get to another plane.” She rubbed her face, smearing her cheek with black. “Mmm, think of it like a river. It has a current to follow.”

                “I need to get to the land without magic,” he said irritably. “This is no good.” Belle tapped the final circle, which was surrounded with grey swirls, though not crossed.

                “Magic will turn around it, it’s a matter of finding the flow and then brushing the edge of that land.” She shrugged. “I’m not a realm-jumper, but it’s not hard to get between magical realms: mermaids can do it, shadow demons, magic beans.” Belle leaned against the other side of her boulder. “The, uh, Blue Fairy likes to keep tabs on who can do it. I remember that much.” He wanted to spit at the reminder of the conniving spirit under discussion, but didn’t.

                “What do you mean by that?” he asked, as civilly as possible. She studied her drawing and wiggled her head from side to side.

                “I’m not a fairy, not really: my mother was, though I’m not sure which one. There are a lot.” Her face had drawn in tight and upset, and for a moment, Rumpelstiltskin felt bad about asking her. “They hatch out of eggs, and she snuck me in, I guess, when I was a baby, into the nursery.” She was scribbling a black scrawl onto the boulder, brows nearly touching. “I thought I was an ordinary fairy, until I never grew wings. They said I was a late bloomer—I was four then—and I remember the Blue Star came and said maybe I should be fostered off to the dryads, if I was a bit of bad blood. She sniffed it out soon enough, when I couldn’t shift my size: not a spark of magic.”

                “So they did send you away?” Rumpelstiltskin thought about being taught to draw wool by two old women, waiting for his father to return, and imagined a young Belle in some leaf-cloak, learning woodcraft while she waited for wings that never came. She gave a sharp laugh and the charcoal stick snapped in her hand.

                “No, she realized it was human blood, not just a mishap of dust and magic, and—well, you know they float around the realms, on their clouds—they threw me to earth.” The remains of the charcoal stick trickled out of her hand in a black cloud.

                He had never told anyone before, but what did it matter, to tell this half-fairy woman? Nothing at all. She was magic-less, an immortal with less power than the average pond nymph.

                “When I was five, my father sold me to a shadow for immortal youth, though it was kind enough to drop me back off at a place I could stay.” He tried to say it coolly, flippantly, but it came out choked and hoarse, and brought back the hollow, empty feeling of being tucked into bed by Moira and Norna instead of his father.

                “Well,” she dusted her hands off, but the black smear on her cheek remained. “That’s terrible: fairies—well, they don’t make good mothers, since all their children are raised in a clutch.” She turned back to the boulder, and he pretended not to see her drag her sleeve across her eyes and nose. When he was clenching his teeth and hands in rage, he could say nothing. “But you’re not trying to get to lands with magic: that’s easy enough. For this other place: you need to drive a spike through, with magic, so to speak. Like throwing a grapple from a moving river to a slippery bankstone.”

                “With magic,” he said, and Belle nodded.

                “I know theory, but I don’t actually have any power. Just a wandering half-breed with a stick.”

                “You can help me wander through the forest,” he said grudgingly, and she smiled broadly at him, all but clapping her hands.

                She walked next to him when they started moving again, smiling and plucking at her ponytail.

                “I’ve never really had a friend before,” she said. He wanted to tell her that he wasn’t her friend, but settled for silence, and she practically skipped as they continued on, occasionally misplanting her staff and slipping to the piled leaves.

                “Me neither,” he said eventually.

~                                                                                                    

                Belle proved to be extremely useful, leading him to quiet tended groves deep in the forest where she picked rare herbs and he found the dryads, bark-skinned women reluctant to share knowledge and with no use for gold. It would take a while: he could make all the gold he needed; he was paying for his magic with every day of his life. Then he could deal for the particular bones the dryads wanted, and learn what they had to offer. Belle dried her herbs in front of their campfire and offered to accompany him to some of the markets he needed to visit.

                She showed him around Agrabah, though she groaned and retched the first time he magicked them both to the famed market: the stalls and shops were nearly endless, and the heat of a high sun was alleviated by a cool sea breeze off the city. Rumpelstiltskin liked the cloth, woven tight and thick of some fabric he had never seen before, and bought a bolt dyed a deep gold color. Belle disappeared while he looked at fine white fabric, lighter than wool and smoother than linen, and he spotted her slipping into an apothecary, extricating her herbs from somewhere in her layers of skirts.

                The shops that sold items of a magical nature were guarded by big guards, and Rumpelstiltskin paused to watch one man with ten rings through one ear and a waxed mustache stroll inside, greeting the surliest of the guards with a ‘hello, dearie’ and a giggle. Everyone who stepped into those shops wore the fabric he had just purchased, in layers and veils, and fastened with gold and jewels.

                The dragon bones the dryads wanted to nourish their grove were not to be found there, though, and Belle tugged him past the shops into another area, filled with men in leather and fur and wool, sweating into wolf pelts and burned bronze or red. Rumpelstiltskin strode up to the largest of them, Belle hanging back a bit, and pulled back his hood dramatically. The hunter jerked back, but recovered and smiled with half-missing teeth.

                “You look half like a dragon yourself!” he exclaimed, and Rumpelstiltskin smiled at him, tilting his head coyly.

                “Allow me to introduce myself: Rumpelstiltskin,” he announced, and mock-bowed, flashing his teeth all the while. “You sell dragon bones?” The man looked discomfited, and nodded.

                “Hunt them myself, I do!” he said, throwing out his chest. Rumpelstiltskin flapped a hand at him.

                “I’d like some smallish pieces, dearie, I don’t care who killed the beast.” When the haggling was done, he stalked back to Belle, not touching her, but shrouding both of them in smoke before taking them back to the Black Forest.

                “Ugh,” Belle said, falling to her knees and bracing her head in her hands. “I don’t think I was meant to move like that.”

                Their next stop was in the hills of Illyria, where legend had it that magical springs flowed with water of all kinds. Belle could read the writing of the land, and read him the reports while he turned the silk from Agrabah into shirts, and brocade into vests. The magicians there had flaunted their power, and his was written on his skin. There was no point in hiding in his cloak, waiting to surprise people: he was the Dark One. Best to start acting like the man who held all the power he would, one day.

                “Whatever spell you cast will need to hold mastery over the river itself—“ she had taken to calling the magic between worlds just ‘the river’ “—which is like trying to bind water with water. If you can’t control the river, you don’t know where you’re going.” She bit her lip. “I think that’s what this says. It’s all very old, from the ancient philosophers.”

                “Why can’t I just swim through the river to the world I need, and bypass all this pesky business?” He was understanding magic, his magic, more and more these days, and what she was suggesting was tremendously complicated, especially for a curse he wouldn’t even cast himself. His foresight was not doing him any favors, either, just giving him headaches whenever he tried to peek through time. Belle shook her head at his question and leaned in uncomfortably close.

                “You have to go up to go down.” She hummed a little and curled up inside her cloak. “Can’t take the river home unless you’ve paddled all of it.” Her metaphors left something to be desired, but he didn’t doubt what she said: if he knew anything, he knew this road would be long and hard and hellish.

~

                He needed a base to work from: somewhere safe, that wasn’t the house he’d lost Bae and Milah in. Somewhere he could store treasure and tools and power. With his ability to move where he chose, it wasn’t hard to find the great grey fortress-palace in mountains claimed by four kings: it was inhabited, by an entire clan of rowdy trolls, but magic and sunrise took care of that. This would be safe: somewhere to keep Bae’s things safe, with little rooms for everything and strong walls.

                Belle saw it, though she protested his mode of travel, as always. Her boots made soft sounds on the stone floor as she wandered the empty great hall, looking around.

                “I can’t stay here with you, Rumpelstiltskin,” she said quietly. “I need to move about. I don’t want to lock myself away.” He spread his hands, confused. She had been walking with him for nearly a year, building campfires and puzzling through the books on magical theory he had accumulated.

                “I’ll be moving around, when I make my deals.” She sniffed.

                “You mean you’ll poof in and out of places and come back here. I know you like to have a home like this, but I can’t.” She fidgeted with her staff. “I’ll visit. Often. We both have all the time in the world.”

                Life was quieter without her presence: he could focus all his energy back into studying what his curse would need. Months passed, and all he did was spin gold and buy books. He had never been the fastest or best reader, but necessity and time made puzzling out manuscripts and the occasional printed book easier every week. More than half of what he found must be old wives’ tales and myths: stories about flying across worlds on the backs of geese with golden feathers, rumors of wells that stretched so deep they reached other lands.

                He found people more useful than books, in the end. He remembered the last words of Zoso, laughing and calling him a desperate soul, and realized he could use the same tactic. He had magic, he was paying the ultimate price, and passing some of that along to others for information and objects was a good idea. People were distressingly predictable: they wanted gold, or power, or safety, or revenge. And whatever they wanted, they would pay his price.

                The first time someone offered him a child, he nearly killed her on the spot, the thought making his blood boil. But she was young, with dirty feet and hair, and her tiny crying son suffered from colic. He gave her what she wanted, and placed the baby carefully in a cradle in the great hall of his castle. There was a king in the north who had a barren wife, and a magic emerald passed down through generations.

                King Oswald and his sickly queen, Mada, handed over the jewel reluctantly, and Rumpelstiltskin probed it with his magic. The artifact—set in red gold by dwarves centuries before—shone brilliantly, and the two rulers reached eagerly for their new child, snatching him from Rumpelstiltskin’s hands. The emerald went into his cabinet, to be distilled into power later, and with that his last boundary regarding things he was willing to do for Bae crumbled.

                Belle came back the first time after eight months, bearing a bouquet of violets and shaking spring mud out of her skirts. She looked the same as ever, a woman in her mid twenties with blue eyes and hair that he had forgotten the precise shade of in the passing months. He smiled and took the flowers with a twitch of his hand.

                “What’s this?” The little bundle was tied with a stalk of early grass. She had picked them on her trek up his mountain, no doubt: they were blooming everywhere. Belle lifted an eyebrow and tilted her head, smiling.

                “It’s a gift, because I haven’t seen you in a while.” She worked whatever trick let her keep pouches under her layers of skirts and left the ratty blue canvas on his table. Full of herbs and pemmican, no doubt. “How’s progress?”

                He ignored the question, memory jogged, and retrieved the blue silk that he’d bought in Qinn: the deep color was some dye not native to this region, and matched Belle’s eyes. He’d spent a few evenings sewing it into a coat, and presented it to her wordlessly, dangling it from his fingers. Her eyes rounded in shock, then softened, and she all but clapped, clutching his hand between hers.

                “That’s so kind of you,” she said, and laid it gently over a chair, seating herself on the tabletop. He procured a cup of water and set her violets into it, not wanting to seem ungrateful. Her amused eyes and soft smile let him know the gesture wasn’t entirely unappreciated, and he wondered what to do. Belle was kicking her legs and looking around at his collection. “Do you ever open the curtains?” He sniffed.

                “No.” She shook her head.

                “I see this is what happens when I leave you alone for a few months.” She hurried over to them, tugging the heavy velvet along old bronze rods, letting weak spring sunshine in through dusty windows. He blinked: in truth, he was not more sensitive to sunlight with his eyes filmed as they were, but he didn’t need it, and what if someone came up to the castle and looked in the windows? He would lose all secrecy. Belle seemed happy with her alteration, though, and wandered about, looking at all his new things.

                He cooked dinner that night, she shadowing him about the kitchen and making appreciative noises over the dishes and glasses. He didn’t really need so many, but they were there, just in case: the clay and wooden ones from early days, and delicate porcelain and metal from Agrabah and Qinn. The oven and stove, which he heated with his magic, had her shaking her head and retreating to pour hot water from the tea kettle into one of the green-and-pink handleless cups from a craftsman in Osata.

                She declined the offer of a bed, taking the blankets and bringing them to the floor of the room he showed her to, raising her eyebrows at his shocked face.

                “Rumple, I’ve slept on the ground almost every night of my life. I couldn’t fall asleep in a bed.”

                “Did you call me ‘Rumple?’” he asked, bemused. She actually blushed a little at the question.

                “Maybe,” she hedged. “Is it annoying?” He shook his head and left her to her nest on the floor.

                Belle left after a few days, wrapping herself in the coat and taking some of his tea, at his request. She admitted that she liked it, and he could always get more, faster than she could, walking or taking a ship about the world. Her stories were the best part of the visit, hearing about the strange old couple who gave her soup with seaweed in it in exchange for some of her inland herbs, or the pregnant barmaid who wanted her advice for things she should feed the baby. The castle was quiet without her: he didn’t bother with a fire after she left, and though he spun while she talked, her voice was even more soothing than the turn of his wheel.

~

                The river—he had taken Belle’s phrase when he realized it was apt—continued to evade him. Potions of mermaid’s blood and silk from realm-jumpers’ coats spattered into nothing, and while the green portals of his nightmares still featured prominently, the thought that he might never see one again distressed him even more.

                The first glimpse he got of the river itself came when he wasn’t expecting it: he was idly mixing ink and blood in his study, trying to make a protection spell against a certain kind of monster, when he spilled ash wood shavings into the mixture. The table shimmered, flexed, and turned into a window of sorts: pure magic, blue and running like water, swirled under his eyes, disordered, seething, and unmalleable. He stretched his hand out, and though his arm remained attached to his body, it felt like an enormous pressure was attempting to grind his bones to nothing, drag him away. The window closed as he jerked his hand away, turning back to wood with a messy, smelly spill all over it.

                He wanted to weep and despair: how could he ever bend the current to take him where he willed, much less to drive through a place it didn’t flow. It would be like trying to wear a canyon in a day, while holding the diverted channel in place with his mind.

                He threw himself into the start of the spell: testing barriers and stitches and everything he could think of in the river. His deals didn’t rest, and he relished that he was starting to build a reputation: Rumpelstiltskin, the Spinner, the Dark One, the Deal-maker, and people were afraid to speak his name. No one seemed to remember that he’d had a son, or a wife, or been anything other than a monster—especially in the far places.

                Belle’s visits were once a year: they exchanged stories, and sometimes he would let her know his progress. Some years talk flowed freely, and easily, and they both laughed, while other years she would demand to know if some story or other was true. Usually they were, more or less, and he was tired of reminding her that magic had a price, and he started every deal with that information.

                “It’s unnecessary,” she would snap, pacing his floor, tracking mud over his rugs. “You don’t need all this stuff.”

                “Need I remind you, dearie, that I may well need it, and you’d do better to stop questioning me!” he snarled back, getting in her face. “I see the future, and I know what I’m doing.”

                “Of course!” She threw her hands up and pulled on her coat—six years old now, and a little patched—huffing angrily. “Rumpelstiltskin never does anything without knowing exactly what will happen! He’s in control of everything.” She stormed out, into a summer rainstorm, and he didn’t chase her. She’d be back in a year, and he was angry, anyway. He knew what was happening; he had realized it would take centuries before the birth of the woman he needed to cast the curse, and he wasn’t going to spend them groveling to a half-fairy vagabond.

~

                The curse came together achingly slowly, with periods of utter stagnation and occasional breakthroughs. He could move from magical land to magical land with a great deal of effort: Wonderland, Fantasia, and plenty of others. Neverland was open, but he never went. Bae wasn’t there, for one, and he never wanted to see his father again.

                The best times were when his and Belle’s destinations coincided, and she would consent to him taking them. They would saunter into big cities, towns destined to become capitals, and villages that would never grow beyond a hundred people. The reactions varied with each and every person, every year. A place that welcomed him as a powerful sorcerer might fear him as a demon fifty years later.

                It didn’t matter, because people would make deals when they needed things, and no matter how much yew and daisy they burned, there was nothing but pure magic that could keep him out. Belle had her share of dangers too, and those plagued him far worse. Wise-woman turned to witch easily enough, and walking back through the streets of seaside Galvestown with magic iron in his coat, he found her clutching her stick and doing her best to fend off half a small mob. Rumpelstiltskin, in days past, would have killed them all where they stood, but he settled for throwing them all back with magic, hoping grimly for a broken bone for each. Belle waved at him, and he hurried close, kicking a rising man back with his boot.

                “Are you safe?” She straightened her hair and clothes and nodded.

                “Certainly not the first time. I always make it out.” He was not impressed with this, and took her arm hurriedly. Galvestown couldn’t need her medicine too badly, if they would do this to her: he whisked them both away before he let her convince him she didn’t need help leaving the area.

                For once, she didn’t protest his methods, and even hugged him. He blinked down at her, touched her briefly on the back, and wondered what to do. She let go of him before he could really worry, and he suggested they go to Eirmane instead, for her to sell her herbs.

                Thirty years into their acquaintance, Belle came sobbing to his door to tell him that the man who’d taken her in when she was a ragged bruised child in fairy silk and raised her as his niece was dead. She stayed for a good month, sitting forlornly in his overgrown garden, walking in circles through his library, and curling up in corners to sleep. He made her tea and soup and tucked sage into all her things, for calm. At fifty years, he told Belle the whole story of Bae, and she didn’t say anything while he blinked tears into her shoulder, simply clutched him close and didn’t let go for the rest of the night. At seventy years, he admitted what he’d done to Milah, just a few days before he met her, and she nodded coolly.

                “She had more happiness for some years, I suppose, than if she would have stayed with you?” It was a question, a desperate attempt to not hate him, and he was so grateful for it he could only stare silently. She didn’t excuse him or absolve him, but she forgave him, he thought, and he held that close to him.

                After a hundred years of visits and the occasional trip to far places, one night, after they drank tea and wine and shared the first of their stories, Belle followed him to his room and wrapped her arms around his waist from behind. Her forehead rested on his upper back, between his shoulders, and he paused, confused.

                “Belle?” She moved one hand up to stroke through his hair, splaying the other over his stomach.

                “Rumpelstiltskin,” she said, and he shivered as she ran her hand down the side of his face. “Please, my sweetest, oldest, only friend, please make love with me.” He reached behind him, took her hands in his, turned, and brushed her hair away from her face.

                “Why?” he whispered, confused, nearly scared. A hundred years was a long time, and he doubted she’d gone so long.

                “Please, I want you,” she breathed, and then, somehow, they were half-dressed on the bed and  she was straddling him, kissing all over his chest, and he was reaching for her hair and pulling off her stockings while she sighed. He turned them over on the bed, tugged the covers over the both of them, and lost himself in her skin and warmth.

~

                She remained the only person Rumpelstiltskin could speak to, and now that she knew the story of Bae, her irritation about the cruelty and darkness he was building into the curse was less. It would require rage and malice and pure hate beyond most people to cast, and had to be made to fit such emotions. Belle didn’t like to hear about it when he spoke about it, and as years wore on, he wondered how to ask her something important.

                Finally, on an ordinary day, when she was drying some of her herbs by his hearth and telling him about the new rocket-propelled weaponry she had seen someone demonstrate it Qinn, he brought it up.

                “Belle, I think you should take your things and go to another realm for a while,” he said quietly, keeping his eyes on his spinning. “I can arrange for Wonderland, or Fantasia, or Oz, or Ingary, or Archenland—you shouldn’t be in the Enchanted Forest.” The sharp scent of burning cohosh filled the room: Belle had dropped her roots into the fire.

                “What?” she said sharply. He looked down at his hands.

                “The curse-caster turned five today,” he said. “It won’t be many years before things get dark and ugly, because of what I need to do.” Belle shook her head, angry, and marched up to him, forcing him to stop spinning and look at her.

                “I will not leave. I will not run away to some land I don’t know, with strange magic, because you feel bad.”

                “You should,” he insisted. “Because the curse is going to catch you.” She sat down next to him on the bench and looked him in the eye, too close for comfort. Her nose was but a breath from his, and if he leaned forward, he would kiss her. They had only gone to bed a few times, and he’d loved every moment with Belle writhing in his arms, but it hadn’t lasted long. Soon enough, she had stopped asking, and he must have disappointed her. That didn’t mean that being this close didn’t edge his skin with fire: immortality had made him beastly, but she was beautiful, even with the irritation she wore now in her eyes.

                “And then you’ll be gone for a long time, and I won’t be able to follow you back to the Land Without Magic. You’ll be alone until you find your son, and I’ll be alone forever.” Her blue eyes collected two tiny tears in the corners, and his breath caught.

                “Belle,” he protested. “Belle, you will make friends wherever you go. You always do.” She shook her head, the two tears running down her cheeks.

                “But you’re the only one I keep, and the only one I can come back to. Please,” she said, and he reached a thumb up to brush at one tear track, and kissed the other. It was as bitter and salty as a tear should be, and only made Belle cry more. “I won’t go. You can make me leave the castle, but you can’t make me leave the realm.”

                He thought grimly about his life spent flitting about the world, making his deals and taking power, and hers, every step made with her own feet, trading medicine for a place to sleep. Why—how could anyone want to stay with him? He wanted to hug her, clutch her as close to him as possible, and stay at her side until the curse rolled over them, but he still had to plot and twist and prod and trade. The future was by no means written—at least not in stone.

                “No, I can’t,” he admitted. “But for your safety, for the safety of the plan, you shouldn’t come here any longer. We can meet elsewhere.”

                The Black Forest would have been ideal: it was a little darker, the dirt richer and the chestnut trees scarcer a few centuries later, but Belle was afraid to wander further than the edges, now that a witch had claimed the center. He could have displaced her, for Belle, but somewhere, she was important. Her fate was tied up in little Regina’s somehow, and he held back.

                He needed to be ruthless, anyway, and Belle made him less so. He needed to condemn Cora to Wonderland, and arrange for knights and kings to die. He needed to do it all, for Baelfire. He planted the curse with Maleficent, and told her only that one day Regina would come for it: she owed him, and would do as he asked.

                The first year, he spent their usual meeting time with the fauns of the Green Downs, trading for nothing really important, but later, he went to a little farm farther north and talked a poor couple into giving him one of their twin sons.

                The next year, he told himself she would probably be in Osata again, and when she wasn’t, he didn’t look further. He had cursed dancing shoes to craft and give to a pair of young sisters, and he didn’t want to look her in the eye.

                So it went. In truth, he avoided Belle for a full decade, until he could feel Snow White’s and Regina’s paths converging in his mind, two riders headed for a collision that would kill so many people. A sacrifice in the name of vengeance, for his curse-caster, and in the name of love, for him.

                He was wondering about love, because he could hardly remember what it felt like to hold his boy, and ten years of finishing the curse, of weaving dark magic into a dam and funnel and rudder and ship, had left him feeling as if he had been swimming in hate and fear for his entire life. And he had been, had been walking through lonely halls for centuries, with only occasional visits and stories. Those were gone now, and he’d worked in darkness for ten years, laying his final pieces on the board, shifting others.

                When he found Belle, she looked up from her little campfire to see him stepping hesitantly towards her. There was a tightness easing in his chest that he hadn’t even realized was there at the sight of her. She jumped to her feet and greeted him with a slap across the face.

                “Belle,” he said, cheek stinging slightly. She shoved him away.

                “What is this!” she shouted. “You come back after ten years! Ten years! I don’t do what you asked, so you act like a child for _ten years_?”

                “I was trying to protect you,” he protested. “Belle, I needed to do things that I couldn’t if I knew I would see you afterwards.” The feeling in his chest was a different kind of pain now, piercing and twisting with her every word.

                “I know you needed to do dark things!” she sobbed. “I told you I understood, two hundred years ago, and you left me to do them on your own. I would have held you and been there for you and reminded you that you were more than a man who would do those things!”

                “Oh, I know why I’m doing them, dearie, and it’s for Baelfire,” he spat, feeling like the man who’d met her in the Black Forest three hundred years ago, angry and scared. His heart felt like it was being squeezed, like something was being ripped from him as Bae had been. “I did it so you didn’t have to watch. I don’t need you to save me, Belle.” He stepped close to her, and she didn’t flinch as he bared his teeth. She never had. “First, because I can’t be saved. Second, because I care about nothing and no-one in the Enchanted Forest. Nothing matters except getting Baelfire back, and if that means setting you aside, that’s what will happen.”

                Belle tossed her head, worked her jaw, and smiled humorlessly. She kept clenching and unclenching her fists, as if she couldn’t decide whether or not to hit him again.

                “I’m not someone you can just ‘set aside,’ Rumpelstiltskin. I’m your _friend._ And you don’t need to choose between me and your son, you need to choose between me and always locking yourself away.” She held up a hand when he opened his mouth, though he didn’t know what he would say. “Don’t tell me you don’t: I come to you, always. I visit you. I asked you to bed. I helped you. I understand that Baelfire is your priority, but I thought maybe I would be more important than your fear.” She was still crying, and he couldn’t simply lean over and kiss these tears away, not after ten years of isolation. “I guess I was just deluding myself for a few centuries that you cared about me.”

                She didn’t touch him beyond that, didn’t say anything as she hurried into the woods, and he stood rooted to the spot, the fire flickering next to him and her usual herbs drying before it.

                There were at least another fifteen years before the curse would be cast.

~

                Mr. Gold sighed as he started his weekly walk from his shop to this week’s selection of Storybrooke’s in-arrears rental properties, renters who thought it was permissible to smoke in his commercial buildings, and alcoholics who forgot he was coming round: never let it be said that the mobile entrepreneurs of the town balked at Maine’s weather.

                The food truck and its red-faced cook, Sebastian, both seemed to be pouring steam and giving off a distinct odor of garlic. Gold ducked around the truck, which was parked—illegally—on half the sidewalk as the third shift workers at the cannery stopped by for food that wasn’t breakfast at the diner. The next business was more of a cart, smelling like cinnamon, icing, and tea. The round-faced Mrs. Potts, Ginny Lucas’s mortal enemy, sat placidly doing cross-stitch on her padded folding chair. She ran her cart as a fun diversion, a business on the side, which irked the tough manager of the town’s favorite diner.

                “Good morning, Mr. Gold!” The owner of the last cart, which was less of a cart and more of a glorified wheelbarrow, gave him a wave as he walked towards her. Rosemary Feyne, with her bundles of herbal remedies, dyes, and drinks, always said hello when he passed her. She liked to dress in long skirts, beads, and t-shirts indicating her devotion to the music of Pink Floyd, and her brunette hair was always pulled back with a ragged blue silk headband. Well, mostly brunette: there was a narrow grey streak in her hair, and only served to add to her aura of natural knowledge. “Care for any calming brews?” She gave him a cheeky smile. “You look like you could use one.”

                “No, thank you,” he growled, and she only shrugged, tucking her filterbags back into their box.

                “See you!” she added: she was always needling him, treating him like he was just anyone to be hawked snake oil on Main Street. Sebastian knew better, and Mrs. Potts was likely actually scared of him. Rosemary only smiled whenever he passed her, and offered something or other. Still, she was polite, which was more than he could say for the overbearing mayor, the slimy journalist who sometimes came sniffing round about his business, or the sheriff, who always seemed a little dazed. Then again, he regularly bought tea from Rosemary, so that could be the cause.

                He collected rent most of the day, passing Rosemary’s cart on the way back once more.

                “Mr. Gold, you ought to wear more solids,” she said, apropos of nothing, and he froze, turning to look at her. She was smiling, as always, eyes sparkling in the evening light.

                “I beg your pardon?”

                “More solids, instead of stripes or gingham shirts. You would look more imposing.” He shook his head, wondering what could possibly be running through hers.

                “And why do I need to look imposing? I’m a pawnbroker, in Maine.” She shrugged, and offered him a dried flower.

                “Free of charge. Consider it part of your free advice.” He twisted the dusty stem in his hands and continued on his way, dropping it as soon as he turned the corner.

                Still, her comment stayed with him, and he acquired some shirts in dark blue and purple, and though they were a little more decadent than he thought he needed, they looked fine. Rosemary noticed and gave him a wink when he passed by wearing it, dancing up to him and tucking a fresh white flower into his pocket, next to his handkerchief. It looked ridiculous, but he moved it to his lapel instead of throwing it away. It was such a small blossom, anyway. Much like the little woman who had given it to him.

                Storybrooke was a stagnant, dreary little place: he varied his walks through town, and his shop displays, but eventually he felt like he was just shuffling through those variations as well. Rosemary, at least, had a different sales pitch each morning, or maybe she just seemed bright and fresh enough that he didn’t notice if she repeated herself.

                He spent his days working at little broken things in his shop, or at amending rental agreements and writing leases, though he never made much progress on either. There were occasional days he could remember: usually, the mayor had a new complaint when she burst through his door, but most of his memories were a haze. Sometimes he felt as if he had been alive for centuries, when he woke in the mornings and couldn’t bend his knee. He always woke feeling as if he was missing something, though it faded as the day went on, and no one else seemed to share the feeling.

                The first time he’d slept with Rosemary, it was an accident: she kissed him first, one evening when there was no one else on the windy street, and he caught her hair in his fingers. She tasted like her greenery, as addictive as tea, and it certainly wasn’t on purpose that he pulled her back to his car and thanked himself for buying such an ostentatiously large vehicle. As they had lain panting, clawing for dropped clothes, he had thought he would kick himself if this ever faded into the blur that was his mind.

                Maybe he was just losing his memory: he wasn’t quite old enough to, but maybe he was. It was a troubling thought, but then he never lost money, never messed up a deal, and he conceded that his life was simply dull and flat. He should be troubled by it: he felt, deep down, that maybe he could be the kind of man who had screaming goals and passion, but he never felt urged to do anything.

                Sometimes when he saw Rosemary, or the mayor’s little boy, something would flare up inside, some potential, but reality snuffed it out.

                His closest thing to a confidante was Rosemary herself, and she only blinked strangely at him when he mentioned it, crushing a dried leaf to nothing in her palm.

                “I don’t worry about getting attached either,” she said, and indicated her skirt and shook her necklace. “Carefree hippie, remember?” She didn’t really understand, but again, he didn’t much care, and so they went their separate, intersecting ways, friends and occasional lovers. After the first few times he spoke to her—though he wasn’t sure exactly when that had been—it felt like they had been doing this for centuries.

                Somehow, she still managed to be a semblance of fresh air.

~

                The yellow VW bug parked in the bed and breakfast lot caused Gold to raise his eyebrows when he walked towards the door: such a silly little car didn’t fit in with Storybrooke’s utilitarian populace. Nor did the curly-haired, leather-jacketed woman standing to take a key from the older Lucas: an outsider, for sure.

                He was lucky enough to not realize _everything_ the second Emma Swan spoke her name: only memories of a cell, and a name he absolutely must remember, and torchlight, and bars, and magic, and, and. He took heaving breaths in the parking lot, closing his eyes and feeling Mr. Gold, with his black and white checked shirt, slip away, and Rumpelstiltskin,  all giggles and silk in the old world, wrapped his hand around his cane and thought, _one step closer to Bae._

Rosemary was still sitting on the edge of her cart when he passed towards his house, sweating and fighting back nausea. Belle. He hadn’t seen Belle since he vanished from next to her campfire, determining that she enjoy her last few years without his brooding presence. She wouldn’t have wanted to see him anyway: he imagined he could still feel the burn of her hand on his face.

                Rosemary simply smiled and waved, and he nodded to her, unable to remember what Mr. Gold would have done. She didn’t seem perturbed, just went back to sorting through her stock, and he thought Belle would have done differently. Belle would have demanded an explanation for something: Belle was a pursuer, and Rosemary’s near-indifference to his indifference burned.

                He went home and made tea, trying to calm down: he still had the pink and green set, that to Mr. Gold’s eyes were Japanese, and he sipped green tea with enough honey to yellow it. He had no way of finding Bae until the curse was broken: for now, it was simply wait and help the Savior as much as he could. And the only person who wasn’t a mindless victim here was Regina, who couldn’t know he wasn’t a mindless victim.

                He couldn’t wish that he was still the dispassionate, cold Mr. Gold, though, because he was sick to his stomach over the half-familiar look in Rosemary’s eyes. She wasn’t Belle, and he needed Belle, not the meeker, milder version. There should be fire and steel and the implacable strength of rivers behind her eyes, not the ordinary looks of an ordinary person.

                It was odd, because he couldn’t remember specifically noticing Belle’s looks before, but he missed them now.

~

                The best way to combat the curse was to aid the Savior, but Snow and Charming’s suspicious daughter wouldn’t want to make friends with him. Best leave that to the princess herself, and the gentler folk in town. The only other thing to do was break habit, and make situations where the better natures of everyone must shine through.

                His first priority was Belle.

                Rosemary Feyne greeted him with a raised eyebrow, and Rumpelstiltskin wondered if Mr. Gold had actually slept with her, or if that was his own memories. His own, if they had lived but one day…it was disconcerting, realizing how little he’d known about the effects of his own curse.

                “I’ll take a few rose teabags,” he said, and she nearly fell off her cart, stumbling and twisting her ankle on the sidewalk. “All right, dearie?” he asked, trying to steady her, almost forgetting his cane.

                “I’m fine,” she said agreeably, brushing her hair out of her face and giving him a smile he almost recognized, and the fist around his heart squeezed and loosened. “Here’s a box of twenty.” He handed over a battered five dollar bill, tucked the box between his body and his cane arm, and bade his old friend a good morning.

                He didn’t go into Granny’s, as a rule, preferring to cook food that could actually be called food, but he bought a dry, overly sweet pastry and asked Ruby to bring him a mug of hot water. It would do for steeping one of his teas, and he wanted to lurk and see who was waking up. Not the wolf girl, who gave him a bold stare and turned on her high heel, bouncing away with a toss of her red-streaked hair at his spurning of the establishment’s coffee.

                Emma Swan walked in and settled gracelessly into a booth, blinking up as Ruby sauntered over.

                “Coffee,” she said blearily, every inch a child of this world. No princess would have been trained up to sit like that, and speak in any way other than completely composed. He thought, for some reason, of Belle, perching on trees. He sipped his tea sourly and wondered why she kept springing to mind.

                Apparently Rosemary wasn’t given to showing up on his doorstep without warning, as Belle had been, because he passed her little cart in the evening again, on his way to prod Regina about her tree and her son’s mother. His castle here was meant to be as lonely as Regina had thought the Dark Castle had been.

                There were small mercies: deals left hanging in the Enchanted Forest to be completed here, and his wheel was still in the basement of his shop. Miss Swan was proving as much of a do-gooder as her parents, and he savored the tingle and burn of Cinderella’s mace as he stalked towards the Savior’s new home. It must have been her influence that provoked the meek-as-milk girl to blather on—and violently—about changing her life.

                “Mr. Gold!” He was stopped in his tracks by a hand on his shoulder, and looked down into shocked blue eyes. Rosemary squinted at his eyes, looking worried. “What happened?” She reached into her cart, retrieved a bowl and a water bottle, and poured water and a few drops of something in a dark eyedropper bottle onto a cloth. “Look up, please.” She was so brisk that he complied before he realized it, and she was dabbing at his eyes with something soothing. The coldness made his eyes stream, but they’d been weeping for hours and he still hadn’t washed all the mace out, and Rosemary’s soothing potion was far better.

                “I hope you make whoever did this pay,” she tsked, and he turned his head back down as she put the cloth away and extracted a small palmful of greenery. She crushed and rolled it in her hands, spat into it, and molded it further into a stringy paste that covered her fingers. Rumpelstiltskin eyed it warily: he’d had no need for Belle’s herbs in the old land, and had no idea what she planned to do with these. Apparently, smoothing it over the cut and bruise on his forehead was her plan, and he almost yelped as her warm fingers spread the gunk over tender skin.

                “Ah, thank you, dearie, but I think I am fine.” She wiped her fingers on the hem of her skirt and smiled hesitantly.

                “Well, I hope that helps some,” she said, and brandished a bit of white bandage and tape for his forehead. It was preferable to having green fragments of leaves fall off all day, and he dipped his head to give her easier access. She was careful, pressing the tape down with delicate fingertips, and he pushed away a shiver at the feeling of her skin trailing over his.

                The Savior gave him an odd look at the bandage on his head, but agreed to help hunt down Ashley Boyd, and he had nothing to do but wait and see if she was as offended by his deal as he thought she would be. He washed off Rosemary’s spit poultice and tried to ignore the memory of her touching him.

                He felt like he was careening from one tragedy to the next, trying to stay out of Regina’s suspicions and still help Emma. The fire, this time, was subtle, a conflagration easy to control and limit: between everything he’d learned about fire in the Enchanted Forest and everything Mr. Gold had known about chemistry, it had been child’s play. Nothing like the blaze he’d set as a poor spinner, as out of control as himself in that moment.

                Most people were still too afraid to say anything after Emma spoke against him, and he made his way home in the dark, privately satisfied. He’d looked as though he was stalking out in guilt and rage, but things were going well. The whole town must be in love with Emma Swan soon. Well, except for Rosemary, who was sitting on her cart with her coat wrapped tightly around her shoulders.

                “Mr. Gold,” she said slowly, as he approached, becoming more than a dark bump on the top of her business and leaping to her feet. “Evening.”

                “Good evening,” he said, very glad that he still had someone to talk to. The last few years before the curse had been lonelier than usual. Her face was shadowed in the street light, but he could make out her faint smile and the shine of her eyes. Something fluttered in his chest at the reminder of the first time they’d spoken, in the dark. She looked like Belle, not Rosemary, and the thing in his chest squeezed tight. He had nothing to say, he found, so he continued on his way, stepping around her, and she reached out and grabbed his hand.

                “Mr. Gold,” she said again, and Rumpelstiltskin felt his pulse stutter.

                “Yes, dearie?” he asked, turning around. She gave him a look like Belle would sometimes, and he thought he recognized something in the bottom of her eyes.

                “This sounds stupid, but I—I can’t remember how long it’s been since I met you. Graham said—right before he died, he said he couldn’t remember how he met anyone. He said Mary Margaret couldn’t remember either. And—I feel like I should know.” He smiled and squeezed her hand in as friendly a manner as he could.

                “I don’t know,” he said, as though he had never noticed this himself. “I feel like I’ve known you for centuries.” He felt his pulse jumping in his hand where he pressed her hand close, then she giggled and tossed her hair back.

                “Centuries, eh?” she laughed, and then she was nuzzling close. “Smooth, Mr. Gold.” He could lean forward and kiss her, like this, and she wouldn’t object. She was all but kissing him, and the tight feeling in his chest was strangling him. Belle’s lips would be like air, a release from the pressure on his heart. He leaned back: Belle would. Belle was angry at him, had slapped him across the face, and he couldn’t kiss Rosemary, couldn’t take Rosemary into his bed when Belle might not be willing.

                “Sorry,” he faltered, and bowed his head. “Things are a little odd right now, I can’t.” She reached out and patted his hand, a little unsurely.

                “You want some tea for anxiety? Or sleep?” she offered. “On the house.” He shook his hair from his face, and smiled as best as he could.

                “That would be nice.”

                It was cold, absolutely freezing as the night wore on and the streetlight became the only light, five meters down the sidewalk, but he sipped tea from an ugly, sturdy mug as people drifted by on the way home from the election, and listened to Rosemary chatter on about tea. The curse was still firmly wrapped around her, but it was slipping about her mouth and heart, and he could see Belle sometimes in her eyes. He wondered how long he had been in love with her, and not realized it until now.

                Not in the Enchanted Forest, for sure: true love’s kiss would have stripped him of his power, and there had been plenty of kissing, for a while. After that, maybe. He hadn’t thought of anything much except Baelfire, and how to enact the curse. It seemed appropriate: to fall in love and never know it.

                Rosemary let him walk with her back to her tiny house, wheeling the cart right through her front door and planting it next to the door. The main room, which had a bed tucked into one corner, draped in green cloth, had strings of roots and bunches of herbs dangling from so much of the ceiling he thought it must be a fire hazard. The scent of all those plants gave him a headache after a few moments standing in her doorway, and he put his mug on the counter of the little kitchen and showed himself out.

                Had Belle been in love with him? He doubted it. She was forthright about things: she would have said if he was more than her friend to her. He was a stubborn, lonely man: sending Belle away hadn’t been enough for him, he’d had to wait until she was back but not herself to realize the half-fairy mongrel wise-woman was more precious than every trinket he’d collected over their centuries of adventure. Maybe he would say something to her after Emma broke the curse, before he went to find Baelfire, and she would have a laugh over it. A nice laugh, because she wasn’t cruel. More likely, he should just keep quiet and let her find someone who could love her better.

~

                As usual, Rumpelstiltskin found the coward’s way out the easier way to take, so he nodded to Rosemary, pretended his heart didn’t clench and tighten at the sight of her, and carried on being Mr. Gold. Besides, as Snow and Prince Charming were proving every day, trying to enact love when there was a curse against happiness was pointless.

                Still, the masochist in him eventually stopped, after a certain wooden man tried to trick him into doing something stupid and he let Kathryn Nolan out of the basement of his cabin, and he looked at Rosemary for a long time before asking her his question.

                “Are you happy?” She narrowed her eyes at him, and ducked down to fiddle with her merchandise.

                “I’m a free spirit,” she said. “I walk everywhere, I gather most everything I need from nature. It’s not happiness that we need. It’s enlightenment.” Her mouth was turned down too much at the corners for him to even believe her claims at contentedness. He snorted.

                “Free spirit?” he said. “Why not walk to a national park, where there are more plants, and more nature? Sleep under the stars, instead of in your little house?”

                “Are you trying to make me feel bad?” she said sharply, and he leaned back, surprised at her vehemence, at the fire in Rosemary’s generally calm voice.

                “No, dearie, just wondering.” Something deep down craved her anger, wanted her to feel the part of her that wanted to move, to push, to demand, instead of letting things slide by her notice and her wishes. It was more like Belle, less like Rosemary.

                “I would like to leave,” she said quietly, and touched his hand one more time. “But I am waiting for someone to go with me.” She settled herself on top of her cart, a pose as familiar to him now as Belle’s perches of branches, the backs of his chairs, and boulders. “I don’t know why—but I have this deep feeling inside that I would be lonely just wandering around. I need some kind of purpose.”

                “What about your medicine?” He indicated her cart. She gave him a wry look.

                “No one needs this: I don’t sell life-saving drugs, I don’t know enough. I sell nervines and cold remedies. It’s not—it’s not a purpose. Not enough of one.”

                He remembered her spending centuries walking through the world, and Rosemary didn’t think that was enough. She looked more than ever like Belle, though, her eyes gleaming in the morning light.

                “I really like to help people. I don’t really know how though. Emma—the sheriff—was telling me and Mrs. Potts once about how she used to find people, and I thought that sounded nice. I mean—“ she paused and gave him a half-smile, accent thickening with her amusement— “She found criminals, but still. I do like to help people.”

                Rumpelstiltskin could only blink at her for a few moments and wish with all his twisted heart that that was Belle speaking, that when she remembered why they were here, she would want to help him find Bae.

                “You’ve helped more people than you know, I’m sure,” he settled for saying. “You’ll find your way.” She tilted her head and nodded, and he left, thinking of her walking away from his castle. No matter that she moved her cart all around Storybrooke, he stopped by her now, and continued on his way. Wandering Belle, stuck, with the illusion of freedom and escape at her fingertips: his curse had been made with irony and cruelty in mind. It had to be something terrible, dark and heavy and sinking to make its way through the river.

~

                He had the flask of True Love’s magic in his jacket, and there was only the walk through the woods towards the spring at the heart of Storybrooke. Water was ever and always the conduit of magic, and this was how he would weave the river that connected all the worlds with magic to this land. He would have power, and he would find Bae.

                “Mr. Gold!” He stopped, and turned slowly, at the sound of Rosemary’s voice. She hurried towards him, leaving her cart behind her on the sidewalk: he was a good ways into the woods. “Are you alright?” He looked down at her, wished he could ask her to go back to her cart and let him deal with things, but last time, she’d slapped him across the face for snubbing her, and now he was in love with her.

                “Not exactly, dearie, but I will be.” He felt that squeezing in his chest again, and wondered how it would feel when she remembered that he had ruined their relationship.

                “Can I walk with you?”

                The woods around Storybrooke had no obstacles but the occasional root and fern, and he could manage the trek easily, even in Mr. Gold’s shoes and with his cane. Rosemary took his arm occasionally, steadying him, and he felt the closeness of her against him render him unstable once more. The curse was crumbling, he could tell: mother’s love would save the day. He must be ready. The shock of magic would prime this land, prime Storybrooke, to receive the wash of magic he was about to douse it in.

                Not far at all, now, and his thoughts were solely of Baelfire: his son, with his dark eyes and good soul. He never let himself think about the specifics of his son, of their reunion, but now he did, because it wasn’t far at all.

                “Rumpelstiltskin?” Belle’s voice came from a few steps behind, and he realized she must have stopped walking. The sound of her shoes scuffling on the forest floor came just before he felt arms wrapping around him from behind and a deep sob.

                “Belle,” he said faintly, and disattached her enough that he could turn and hug her back. “You remember.” His voice caught in his throat, and he had to swallow before he could speak again, roughly. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” Her fingers came up to stroke through his hair, and he shuddered as she rested her forehead on his sternum, then lifted her head to reveal her tear-stained face.

                “It’s okay,” she rasped, and tried to step. “I didn’t mean to jump all over you, sorry.” He tried to remember how to let go of her, but now that she was _Belle_ once more, he couldn’t manage more than a stare. “You’ll be able to find Baelfire,” she exclaimed, and her face lit up, more tears sliding down. “Finally, you’ll be reunited with the person you love!” She succeeded in detaching herself from his arms and hugged her arms close to herself. “Can I help you?”

                “Belle,” he faltered. “Thank you. You told me everything. The river. The way back.” She reached forward and touched his cheek.

                “Why, you’re welcome,” she said lightly. “Why are you out in the woods?” He pulled the flask of magic from his jacket and showed it to her. “What’s that?”

                “Magic,” he said. “To make this land part of the river.” She looked blankly at him, and closed her hands firmly around the bottle.

                “No.”

                “What?” he said, trying to tug it back, but Mr. Gold was not stronger than Rosemary, so Belle ended up with the bottle.

                “You’ll just separate Storybrooke from the rest of this land, and then you’ll be back where you started!” She tucked the bottle into her skirts, and for the life of him, she could still hide things there.

                “Belle, I need the power to seek out Baelfire!” She shook her head.

                “No, you’ll have Emma. You’ll have me. You won. You got here. You don’t need to start a new race.”

                “But—my enemies are here!” She shook her head.

                “Without magic, either. And so are your allies.” She stepped close to him, took his hand. “You have me. I’ll help you find Baelfire. Let me help you, for once.”

                “Belle—“ he protested, and she turned him around, prodding him to take a step back towards town. He followed, walking away from power. He couldn’t walk away from Belle, not again. “You promise you’ll help me find him?” he pleaded, stopping. Scrying would be easier. There was no proof that bringing magic would make another barrier. They could turn back.

                “Trust me,” she said quietly. “Have I ever led you wrong?” He shook his head dumbly.

                The edge of town was deserted, eerily quiet, and Rosemary’s cart stood unbothered. He clutched at Belle’s arm.

                “I’m pleased to see you’re you again,” he said, in his best approximation of his old deal-maker’s voice. Belle gave him a smile, but it wasn’t quite the smile of pure joy she should be beaming at the breaking of the curse.

                “Rosemary not so much fun?” she asked, and picked through some of the cart’s contents, shredding a dried leaf to nothing.

                “She wasn’t you,” he said. “I didn’t love her. She needed you to fill her up.” Absurdly, romantically, he thought he needed her as well, to fill up his empty rooms with her presence, fill up his mind with her stories, fill his tea sets with her infusions and tisanes. Belle was blinking at him, standing transfixed, hands creeping to her mouth, tears building again. “What’s the matter?” he said hurriedly.

                “Do you love me?” she said shakily. He studied his hands on his cane, bowing his head like he had before Rosemary.

                “I didn’t realize, until here. Until Rosemary was there, and I didn’t feel the same way I felt around you.” He needed to walk into town anyway, discern the situation. “I’m sorry to let you know so soon, I know you must have things to do. Please, just don’t worry about it. I know we’ll still be friends.” The thought that she might not want to be, might be upset, felt like being stabbed, and he remembered how much she had cried when he’d come back after refusing to be her friend for ten years. Maybe she had felt that way, for that time. It felt like the early days after Milah left, the first fifty years after Bae, and it had only been a few seconds of agony.

                “You’re an idiot, and we need to have a serious talk about your idiocy,” Belle said, in a choked voice, and Rumpelstiltskin felt a rough, tiny hand clamp on the back of his neck and a pair of lips press firmly against his for a moment: a brusque, taking kiss, and then Belle was glaring and laughing through another fall of tears.

                “Belle?”

                “I’ve loved you since the very beginning!” she cried, and wiped angrily at her face. “Since the first year, I think.” She pressed her face into his jacket, clutching his lapels and smearing tears and mucus on his chest. “For three hundred years, I loved you, and I never thought you’d love me back.”

                He needed to think of something to say, but the only thing that came to mind was,

                “But you can’t, you always say how you feel.” She shook her head helplessly, and let him kiss her hands and arms as he tried to take it in.

                “I couldn’t,” she said. “You needed to find Baelfire first. You had a mountain to climb. I couldn’t—couldn’t wreck the hero’s quest.”

                She was right: he had had no thought for anyone but Bae: not the kind of love Belle would need. She must have devotion, the pure focus he had poured into the curse for centuries. He had been horrible to her. He tried to gasp this out, but she just tugged his head next to her.

                “You were, at the very end. But the rest: I asked only for your friendship, and I knew full well what I was doing.”

                “Being a martyr?” he asked, trying to tease, but not managing it. He needed to sit down. They could go to his shop.

                “No more than you. Sometimes things must wait. And—it wouldn’t have mattered. You couldn’t love me then.” She nudged him in the side, and gave him a cheeky grin. “And I didn’t wait on everything, remember?” He smiled back, because this should be happy, an occasion for celebration and reunion, not weeping over how thoroughly he had wrecked the past.

                “Mmm, I don’t think I could forget,” he said, and steered them towards his shop. Maybe after a lot of tea, and a long explanation from him about all the ways he’d been terrible, and she would be okay with spending the night with him. After all, she was a wanderer who’d spent the last twenty-eight years in the same bed.

                The town center could wait. He had his favor from the Savior to cash in. Storybrooke was still. For one night, he would simply sit down and hear the start of twenty five years’ of stories from her, and share his own. He had made it. For once, something had been done right. He could try and enjoy the down slope.

                The bed in his shop was tiny, and uncomfortable, but Belle climbed onto it, made Rumpelstiltskin shed shoes, belt, jacket, and waistcoat, and drew a blanket over both of them.

                “Neither of us even has to stay awake and keep watch,” she said, and it was still the morning, but he didn’t feel like moving, and the shock of the day so far had him bone-weary. Curse broken. Love in his arms. His son was in the world he could finally walk into.

                “Tell me about where you went the first year,” he said, and Belle snuggled in next to him.

                “Well, I went right to Lotara, where there is a legend about a special white flower that is the food of a certain frog—“

                “I know the legend,” he said, and she shoved him gently, then kissed his chin.

                “It’s my story.”

                “I’m sorry.”

                “I forgive you,” she said softly, and he held that close until the rest of the sorrys would come out. He reminded himself to make them some tea for their stories, when it got later. For now, he threaded his fingers through her unbound hair, felt the tightness mostly leave his heart, and listened to Belle talk.


End file.
